Sara Blakely has a beautiful smile on her face in every shot I see of her. If I had a billion dollars, I’d definitely walk around with a big grin on my face as well.
Blakely traveled from Clearwater, Florida to Orlando to work at Disney World after failing two attempts at the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). She was two inches too small to fit into the Goofy costume, so she spent the day at Epcot ensuring sure guests were safely harnessed into a ride.
Three months was enough for anyone, so she moved on to another employment. For a firm called Danka, I was selling fax machines door to door.
Wearing any kind of professional clothes in Florida is a pain, and Blakely admitted that she couldn’t handle the way she felt when wearing pantyhose.
To shorten a long tale short, she snipped the feet off her pantyhose and thought she was onto something. She spent evenings in a college library researching hosiery and eventually came up with a foundation undergarment for women. She created her own patent using a Barnes & Noble textbook to save $3,000 in legal fees.
She gave her new product the name “Spanx” because she felt it was humorous and memorable, plus she had heard that things ending in the letter “X” sold well.
She located an old textile mill in North Carolina and gave them all of her $5000 in funds to create her first batch of merchandise. She was able to sell the finished products to Nieman Marcus.
Spanx has plants in 15 different countries. It sells like hotcakes.
Sara Blakely became the world’s youngest female self-made millionaire in 2012, at the age of 41.
